Is your future open or closed?

On Sunday we are talking about what can seem a bit paradoxical at first: having a fresh future.

In many ways this almost seems absurd. Like how can a future not be fresh? It hasn’t happened yet? Anything is possible already?

And while on the surface that is true, when you dig a little deeper, it isn’t.

For many of us our future actually seems to narrow as we age. There are things that are no longer a possibility for us that once were. Like I will never be a professional soccer player, unless of course they start hiring unfit, and unskilled amateurs who play a couple times a year. The chances of me being a movie-star are also relatively unlikely.

The point is that as we grow older, our futures can seem to constrict and shrink.

Add into that how we also often tend to base our future on current circumstances, or limit our future because of past mistakes. We tend to think that if things are going badly now, they probably will in the future. Or if we have some terrible mistake, disaster, past event, or sin, that it can limit our future too. That we won’t find a happiness again after that divorce. That life won’t ever be as good as when that person was in our lives. Or before that moral failure I could have been a leader, but now that’s out.

My point is that while in theory our futures are full of possibility, in practice, they are often much more limited and narrow.

And that is why I think we need to find a fresh start for our futures. That is why I think we need to learn to dream again about what the future can hold. That is why we need to move beyond our present circumstance, past mistakes, and personal potentials to ask the question what does God want to do in our lives.

Because our futures are not just dependent on our personal skill sets, connections, present conditions, or past mistakes. Our futures are dependent on God.

And come Sunday we are going to see what that means, and what a practical difference that makes. But before we get there, why not spend some time dreaming with God what he might have in store for your future. Because there is one thing I am sure of, that the future God has planned for you is always better than the one you have planned for yourself.